


'til Kingdom Come (Four Ways Wesley Lost His Mind)

by faith_girl222 (faithgirl)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Angst, Dark, F/M, M/M, Multi, Season/Series 03, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-11
Updated: 2005-08-11
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:06:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithgirl/pseuds/faith_girl222
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four ways Wesley is who he is without memories. Featuring Buffy, Angel, sex, long winters, the Council, Giles, scares of various kinds, death, happiness and strange happenings. Wesley, as he is and isn't and might be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'til Kingdom Come (Four Ways Wesley Lost His Mind)

**Author's Note:**

> title and section epigraphs from Coldplay's "'til Kindgom Come". The opening of Part 2 was inspired by Matthew Woodring's novelization of _Revenge of the Sith_.

1   
_For you, I'd wait 'til kingdom come.  
Until my day, my day is done.  
And say you'll come, and set me free,  
Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me._

Wesley wouldn't think about why he couldn't remember, or contemplate what it was he couldn't remember, until well after Giles found him. He woke from a nightmare his first night, and tried to come up with what sort of past he had. He tried to define his personality; he couldn't cook, but he seemed to speak well with ease. He had a British accent, and therefore must be from Britain. Giles claimed to know him, but was mysterious about how. Perhaps he was involved in shady dealings? Or the government, they were always supposed to be Up to Things.

He was in his thirties, that much was plain. So, he'd probably been through school, and had some type of job. Had there been an accident leading to the loss of memory? Maybe it was a workplace accident. Had he gone off and done something that resulted in this? Was he missing work as he sat in the Library trying not to eavesdrop on Giles on the telephone in the next room?

He was found naked, so there were no clothes to show what tastes he had, or identification. How had he come to be in America? Why was he not in England? Did he live over here?

He was thrown from his train of thought between stations by a dark haired girl strutting into the library. His gaze was immediately drawn to her chest, displayed obviously under a red shirt. Wesley did his best to look at her face, mostly in case she noticed his staring.

She didn't. In fact, she didn't notice him at all. She walked past him to knock authoritatively on Giles' office door. "Giiiiles."

Giles looked at her sternly through the glass door, and she turned away with a roll of her eyes. A wide, almost predatory, smile crossed her face when she finally noticed him.

He spluttered. "H-hello there."

She slinked – there was no other word for it – toward him. "Hi. I'm Faith. And you are?"

"W-wesley. Well, that's what Giles tells me. I don't actually know, you see, my memory is a bit – elsewhere."

"Fascinating." She looked anything by fascinated.

"Faith, did you ask Giles – " Another girl, blonde this time, had come into the library. Wesley was the first thing she noticed. The second was the way Faith was all over him.

Faith pulled out of his personal space, more to his displeasure than relief, before the other girl even had time to comment. "He's on the phone, B. Haven't been able to say a thing to him."

"Fuck." Wesley didn't know why it should shock him that 'B' would say that word, but it did.

"You're his favorite. You go interrupt him. I just get nasty looks."

"You're such a baby," B sniped, not looking at Faith. She hammered on Giles' door. Tiny fractures appeared around her fist in the glass window. Annoyed, Giles terminated his phone conversation.

"Really, Buffy, do contain yourself. Now, what seems to be the matter?"

"One, who is that, and why are you letting Faith play alone with him? Two, we have a problem that I need to talk to about, alone."

Without another word, Giles stepped aside, and Buffy and Faith went into the office.

"Wesley, I'll only be a moment."

* * *

Giles was only a moment if 'moment' actually meant 'two hours' and no one had bothered to tell Wesley. The three of them spoke intensely for the entire time, or at least the time Wesley didn't spend sleeping on the table.

When he woke, they were sitting around the table, reading books. Another girl was there – how many young girls fraternized with Giles? – looking things up on a computer.

"Oh, good, you're awake. Willow has been doing some research, to see if we can ascertain how you came to be in this country. So far, it was not by air or sea, unless you went by another name."

Wesley sat up, embarrassed, and wiped away some drool. "Are you certain of my name? Could you not be mistaken?"

"Unless a great many things have changed since I last saw you, I could not be mistaken about your name."

Buffy handed him a book, and told him to find anything about loop holes in laws that made their makers immune to its effects.

Wesley settled into reading, sneaking glances at the others. It all seemed very odd. At least he felt comfortable in Giles' stiff conservative clothes. But then, he was just glad not to be naked.

He made quick notes, utilizing a shorthand he hadn't realized he knew. After another hour, the evening was getting on. The girls packed up, and left.

Wesley remained at the table, contemplating this situation. He had no money, and didn't know what talents he might possess. Giles suggested, as the others were packing up for the night, "Since you seem to be good with books, maybe you could be my temporary Assistant." It seemed a good position, certainly better than anything Wesley was expecting.

Giles took Wesley back to his flat. It was small, and felt British to Wesley. Appropriate, since they were both British. Giles offered him the couch, and disappeared up to the loft with a snifter of brandy.

Wesley woke from a nightmare at four, and did not get back to sleep. Instead, he stared at the terra cotta ceiling trying to make sense of everything. Of a life without a past, of knowledge without memories, of a lacking identity.

* * *

They went into the library together. Giles paid Wesley upfront for his first two weeks of employment.

"This isn't usually done, but given everything, I thought you might wish to go by some of your own clothes, food, that sort of thing."

Wesley resisted, but Giles wore him down. They passed a peaceable day in the library, but Wesley was constantly distracted by the sensation of money burning a hole in his borrowed pocket.

When the bell signaling the end of period seven tolled, Willow and Buffy came into the library, chatting with each other. They paused for a moment when they realized he was there, but then continued on as though he made little difference.

At the counter, Willow set up her computer, and Buffy looked intently at Wesley.

"We didn't really get a chance for introductions last night. I'm Buffy."

"Wesley, or so I'm told."

She laughed, ducked her head, made his heart pitter-patter inappropriately.

"What are you up to today?"

"Shopping, actually. These are Giles' clothes. I would like to say I know them to be unlike me, but of course I don't know any such thing for certain."

Before Wesley knew what was happening, Buffy had invited herself along, and they were descending upon the mall. Wesley felt certain he had not been living in America as he stood just inside the doors, staring at the enormous, garish display of stores.

He was unable to give anymore thought to this, though, because Buffy was dragging him into a store. Wesley stood for ten minutes staring at the fashions trying to decide what sorts he liked before he figured it out: what does it matter what he would have chosen three days ago? He went straight to the things that drew him. Buffy smiled and laughed obligingly as he modeled them for her.

After, she took him to Ralph's to buy food.

She said, "You're skin and bones," and she wasn't wrong. He picked and chose carefully, inspecting labels, reading nutritional information. Some of these things were familiar, some weren't. He recognized many things, some expected and some entirely not so. Earl Grey and whole wheat bread, 1% milk and strawberry ice cream. Strange little candies and foreign fruits. Afterwards, Buffy dragged him down the street the Espresso Pump for coffee, his hands full of cheap plastic grocery store bags.

She was bright, beautiful, and probably much too young for him. He'd met her in a high school library, for goodness sake. She was also inquisitive and interesting and interested in him.

The sun began to sink in the west, and she rushed him to Giles' flat.

* * *

He had books spread around the small flat. Old leather bound things, much like the ones in the library.

And he reacted with secrecy when Wesley asked about them.

"Is Wesley staying here a good idea? I mean, for now. Because, look at the couch, your books are taking up so much room I couldn't lie on it."

"There's the spare room . . ." Wesley interjected, as color rose in his cheeks for no reason.

Re-stacking some books impatiently, Giles replied it didn't even have a bed.

Giles and Buffy shared a look – a confusing one that involved some subtle indicating of the mess in the room. After a few seconds of this, Giles appeared to give in, and Buffy smiled triumphantly, turning to Wesley.

"We'll find some place that is excessively not here. Xander's out, he's sick; Willow's parents would flip is they found out." She trailed off, seemingly circling around an idea she didn't feel able to voice.

He asked, for perhaps less than noble reasons, "Why I couldn't stay with Faith?"

"She's living in a pay per-night per-person hotel." Wesley's mind filled with mob and government theories.

"My mom might be up for having a guest," Buffy suggested it reluctantly, as though expecting a fatherly reprimand from Giles.

As they discussed the idea, in weird half talk, Wes tuned them out and watched how they were with one another. Giles was decidedly fatherly, and Buffy gave all appearances of a somewhat petulant daughter who was secretly a daddy's girl.

When Wesley zoned back in they've decided it's Wesley's choice: Buffy's or Giles' book-covered couch.

At Giles there would be a ride to work, at Buffy's their would be an actual bed, that was definitely not covered in books.

"I-I think I'll go with the bed," he said to his shoes.

A scowl crossed Giles' face. As Buffy slipped into the kitchen to call her mother, Wes came within whispering distance of Giles'. Giles began to talk, but Wes beat him to it.

"Are you her father?"

"What? No. I'm just the librarian. If you try anything, just remember I own a lot of very heavy books."

Giles just smiled at him as Buffy yelled her mom was making up the guest room right that second.

It was very, almost surprisingly, dark out.

"I'll drive you over now, Wesley, before it gets to be too much later," Giles offered, pulling on a winter coat. Together they walk awkwardly down to curb, coming to a stop beside the sad contraption Giles' called a car.

"Buffy, you don't forget you have to stop by Xander's," Giles said curtly, and then turned to Wesley, "So she'll need to go separately. "

And so Wesley got alone into a car with a maniac who threatened book violence.

* * *

Joyce welcomed him warmly. Her home looked like her, warm beiges and art pieces, accentuated with darker outlines. He wondered, fleetingly, what his own flat must look like.

There was dinner waiting in the dinning room, and she remained in the hall talking quietly with Giles as he nervously helped himself.

She returned, and engaged him in pleasant, if forgettable, conversation until he finished the meal. It's now well after nine, and Buffy hadn't returned.

" Buffy is out visiting a school friend, Giles said?, Wesley asked, conscious of speaking to the mother of the girl on whom he has an entirely inappropriate crush.

"She might be a bit at Xander's. He's home sick with the flu and she hasn't been getting to see him at school." After a few minutes of mostly-comfortable silence, he finished, and she removed the dishes.

The room made up for him was nice, the usual type of guest room, almost leeched of life and color so that any of the many people who might come calling could be equally uncomfortable there.

* * *

It's after three, and Wes wakes at the sound of something landing on the floor with a thump. He goes to the door as quietly as he can, which is a good deal quieter than most could. He sees the light is on in Buffy's room.

Her curtains flutter behind her. Her mother comes into the room. Instead of looking like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck, Buffy embraces her, and they talk quietly for a moment. Joyce's head jerks in the direction of his room, as though indicating him. He takes a swift step back from the tiny crack his door is open, but they can't see him. Joyce smiles tiredly at her daughter, and returns to her own room. Buffy opens a trunk at the end of her bed, and dumps a duffle bag into it. Why on earth would she need a duffle bag to visit a sick classmate? Was it full of assignments to hand in for him?

All such thoughts were driven from his mind in the next moment. The door to her room remained wide open, but her shirt became 100% less covering her. An efficient, but excessively clingy and low cut sports bra was underneath. This one had a clasp at the front. Her fingers came close to it, but didn't undo it. They went past it to tuck her hair behind her ears, to her belt and fly. Finally she stood in the middle of her room in a bra and undies. She came closer to the door and she put the clothes away, and disappeared into the depths of the room.

The light went out.

Wes went back to bed feeling ashamed; both for peeping and for the reaction he was having. As his hand slid firmly over his hardness he paused to wonder how far under age she was, and which ring of hell he was ending up in for this.

* * *

Wesley didn't wake naturally. He woke to Buffy poking him. She was already dressed, and holding what must have been meant to be a school bag - but from where he lay, it looked to be a fluffy heart with sparkles on it. He smiled guiltily at her.

Working with Giles was interesting, but seemed to involve Wesley doing little. When they'd arrived that morning Giles had asked him to shelve the returns. There were two. No students came into the library after Buffy and Willow left it that morning.

Giles sat in his office reading and drinking tea.

Wesley wandered away into the Stacks. He was curious what was in the Cages, but they were locked. The library was thorough enough. More leather bounds were in the shelves. Strange old books. He handled them with reverence.

He nearly dropped one when he heard an unpleasant voice. Cautiously he peeked around the shelf. An unpleasant man matched the voice. He stood by the counter regarding every inch of the library with distaste, with contempt even.

"Giles. We need to discuss Summers."

"And you came all the way to the library? You couldn't simply have had the secretary page me?"

"Don't be smart with me, Mr. Giles. I could have you fired."

"What is it, specifically, you wish to discuss, Mr. Snyder?"

"That's Principal Snyder to you. I want to discuss," and he looked around suspiciously, dropping his voice, "Ms. Summers' extracurricular activities."

"And what would those be? Her time spent in here is on homework with friends. Surely you don't consider homework an extracurricular?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"Perhaps we can discuss this further in my office."

They disappeared inside. Wesley walked nonchalantly past, and out of the library.

Behind him, Snyder asked: "Who was that?"

"My new assistant."

"You don't have the funding for an assistant."

"Then it's a good thing the school isn't paying his wages, isn't it?"

Wesley bought what passed for food in the school cafeteria. Buffy waved him over, and he made a show of refusing her. Buffy admonished him; Giles had eaten with them before. With false reluctance, he joined them. And met a charming creature named Cordelia. A cheerleader who found his accent amazing. She was attractive to be certain, but she made her interest far too obvious for Wesley's taste. Buffy was more subtle, biting her lip every time Cordelia made a pass at him.

* * *

Wesley walked home with Buffy. They didn't leave until evening was nearly upon them. The Magic Hour, the film studios called it, Wesley thought. Many such little details, pointless information, seemed to be accessible to him.

She seemed talkative and he let her go on. He considered her. She couldn't possibly be interested in him. He didn't think he looked too bad, but he had to have been going on twenty years her senior. He wasn't a movie star; he wasn't "hunky".

At the end of her street, she paused, came to a full stop, and turned to look at a dark area at the side of the road. She stood, patiently. Just as he was about to ask what she was doing, a man stepped from the shadows, seemingly out of nowhere. Words like "lurking" and "skulking" and also "torrid gothic romance" sprang to mind.

"Angel." She put a lot of meaning into the word. Tension was rife.

"Buffy." She wasn't the only one who could make a single word mean a million and one things.

This 'Angel' eyed him. Buffy introduced him, and a blush seeped into her cheeks.

Both men were aware of it. And Wesley became aware of the absolute absence of hostility coming off Angel. He seemed protective and interested in Buffy, and yet Wesley, whom he should have viewed as a threat, got no rise from him. That was either insulting, or very interesting.

Buffy said goodbye, Wes waved awkwardly, and they continued on to Buffy's.

He could feel Angel's eyes in his back, but when he looked over his shoulder, there was no one to be seen. At the end of the walk, Wesley became aware that perhaps his estimation of being completely straight had been off.

2  
_The wheels just keep on turning,  
The drummer begins to drum,  
I don't know which way I'm going,  
I don't know which way I've come._  
This is Wesley six hours ago: running down an unfamiliar street between abandoned warehouses. It is evening, the light is failing, and in his heart he knows things are not going to end well. Every beating he ever received from his father, every sneering rejection from a girl flash before him. Rage is not a even the slightest bit new. It's old, worn away in patches like an old plush toy. There is a weapon in his hand. An old crossbow, like the Council was issuing in the 30s. It's from his father's private collection. Stolen, in fact, from said collection, two days prior. He is being hunted, but not for anything he has done, or anything he is. Fate could never allow that. No, he is being hunted because the Council was stupid, and let something slip to him. Wesley feels both pride and shame that they know him so little that they actually expected him to be capable of acting upon such information. If they had not made the first move, had they not driven him to drastic action to merely keep himself alive. . .

Well, if it hadn't been for all that he wouldn't be here in this alley, rather he would be back in his stuffy, cloistered apartment in Mayfair with that bitch Margot. (Why had he let mother set them up, why?)

Foot steps come up the street behind him. Wesley waits with baited breath. He will go out fighting, if go out he must. He will not be a coward. He will not be a self-fulfilling propechy. He will be a bloody blemish upon his parents' reputations. He will be their scandal, whispered about in the highest circles of society. This he promises.

Everything lengthens, is drawn out like slow motion in a film. The steps of his hunter are jarring, not matching in time with their owner's movements. Wesley steps from his hiding place, crossbow leveled. He is almost surprised. He wishes, desperately, fleetingly, in his last real moments as Wesley Wynham-Pryce, that he was more surprised. That he had been defeated not by something he failed to calculate for, but something he'd never imagined at all.

And in his last moments, as Wesley hears his last words, it's like his every wish is granted. Now this, is not something he knew about. And, now, he'll never know about it . . .

"Take it all, leave no trace. We cannot have him interfering again." These are the last words he hears.

This is Wesley six hours later: Running down an unfamiliar street, past candy and hardware shops. It is the middle of the night, the stars are stark in the sky and in his heart he knows nothing at all. He has not seen the stars clearly in a long time, but he could not name you a memory. He could not name himself a memory in the darkest moments of night and self-truth. He could tell you nothing at all. Where there should be a million humiliating summers at camp, where there should be a thousand failings to live up to his father's wishes there is . . . nothing. Nothing at all. An empty space, so pristine he could not guess the shape of things.

It is five minutes before Wesley realizes he's naked, that he's cold. And that someone has seen him. Sirens trill in the distance. Gyrating red and blue lights proceed the squad cars up Main Street. Wesley moves to flee, to hide, but before he can a hand comes out of nowhere, and tugs him seamlessly into the alley behind the record shop.

A man in his forties with glasses and an almost exasperated expression is standing much too close to Wesley for his comfort. It's a moment before the man realizes his state of undress and withdraws to a safe distance.

"They're certainly letting you out on a long leash these days. I can't imagine you got the naked part past Travers. He's hardly one up for a good prank. "

"What?"

"This is a prank, isn't it? All the way to Southern California to run around naked. It isn't in very good taste, is it?"

"I'm quite sure I don't know what you mean. Who are you?"

"I know it's been a long time, Wyndham-Price, but I can't believe you don't remember the person who put you through practical training, such as it was. I imagine they've changed methods since then. Terrible accident, the way that secretary died. I've never understood why they insist on keeping custody of the creatures, especially when there are so many in the field. Seems like a false indicator to me, doing it under controlled circumstances."

His brain is doing it's best, it really is, but absolutely nothing the other man is saying makes any sense.

"Wyndham-Price?" he asks in a small voice that sounds rather a lot like a child's.

"Yes . . " and his words fall sharply away, leaving a claustrophobic silence in their wake. "What is the official explanation for the problems the North Boys' Dormitory has?"

"What?"

The strange camaraderie the other man had been trying to foster evaporates. "Come with me." He moves toward the mouth of the alley, Wesley following. He comes up short, turns and looks Wesley up and down. "Here," he offers Wesley he own jacket.

He walks out into the street beyond, and does not look back. The town around them is silent, almost dead in the depth of night. They pass the beginning of the residential district, and there are lights on in a few houses, porch lights that are comforting lanterns against the shadows. This man, and it occurs to him now he has asked after his own name but not his, leads him into a condominium complex.

"E-excuse me, what's your name?"

"Rupert Giles."

"And we know each other?"

"Apparently not anymore."

"But we did, once?"

"Yes, when we were younger."

"A-and, who am I?"

"An irritating pillock who won't shut up long enough for me to think," Rupert Giles said. And somehow it wasn't harsh, only dry. Almost bemused.

"Right," Wesley countered, crooking the word in the middle. Rupert held the door for him, and he stepped into a small flat, which brought up emotions and reactions he was afraid he would never know the reason for.

Wesley woke on the couch some hours later. A note rested on his chest, from Giles. It told him Giles had had to go to work, that he would be home in the afternoon. Food was in the fridge. And, added emphatically at the end, under no circumstances was Wesley to leave the house. He continued to lay there, looking at the last line. It was tacked on as a PS. Why would something Giles felt was so important be added on? Did he not wish Wesley to be aware how important it was?

Wesley's sofa ruminations did not last long. The clock struck 4, and Giles came at the door. He stayed silently on the couch, letting his chest rise and fall evenly. He kept his eyes shut. The sound of Giles' tread was unfamiliar. A briefcase was placed unceremoniously onto the desk. Bags were placed on the counter. Giles stood behind the couch, surely looking down at Wesley. Through some miracle Wesley did nothing to betray his consciousness, and Giles came further into the room.

After several minutes of listening to Giles turn the pages of a book, Wesley made the motions of someone just waking. Twitch of his eyelids, a partial roll-over, slow opening of the eyes. As his falsely tired gaze met Giles' bemused one, Wesley took a moment to wonder what had possessed him to perform such a charade.

"Good afternoon."

"Hullo," Wesley said, his face half in a pillow.

"We're going to have to find some place else for you to stay. As your current cramped position on my couch attests, this is not the best place for you to stay." Wesley stamped down the tide of panic that came. "There's a spare room, it's a bit, drab and awful actually, but - "

And he was cut off by the doorbell, followed quickly by a hesitant knock. Giles frowned at him, and answered it. He froze in the doorway, blocking Wesley's view. The room seemed to become very cold, but whether that was because of who was the door, or because a gust of air had come in the door Wesley wasn't sure.

"Quentin, why are you here?"

"Is that any way to speak to a superior, Mr. Giles," he asked, except it did not sound like a question. It sounded like a weak attempt at banter with someone whom he's never had much of a rapport.

"Last I checked, Mr. Travers, you were no longer even so much as a colleague."

"Ah, yes, right, I'd forgotten." Wesley couldn't see him, but he was getting the impression of someone bleached out, blank and vague. Someone who had not always been that way.

"I can't imagine forgetting something like that Mr. Travers," Giles said, his voice softening. "Are you quite sure you're all right?"

"I'll be fine, Rupert, I just have to finish things, before it gets out of control. They'll be coming soon, I don't doubt, for me and especially for him. I tried my best, but I couldn't get it all, there wasn't enough left to finish it. He, he went first. Make him leave, make him start again. Hide him, help him, don't try to search for memories better off lost. Please, just ... "

But whatever further instructions he meant to give died in his mouth with the sound of a gunshot. Giles was shouting, and slamming the door and ushering Wesley out the back. And Wesley could not for the life of him think clearly, see clearly, understand much of anything. Giles pressed a small piece of paper into Wesley's hand, and then he was streaking away across the yards of Giles' neighbors, urged on by Giles' shouting.

When Giles fell behind just as they reached the edge of town, Wesley didn't notice. He ran until he reached the address on the paper.

He rang the bell, his breath coming in panicky gasps. The door opened to reveal a blonde girl. In the failing daylight, they stood on the porch of 1630 Revello drive. They spoke for a moment, and then the girl stepped back, and the door closed behind him.

 

3  
_Hold my hand inside your hands,  
I need someone who understands.  
I need someone, someone who hears,  
For you, I've waited all these years._  
Wesley lay in Giles's bath tub. It was four in the morning, by Wesley's estimation. Wan light stretched across the ceiling. It was two hours since Giles found him naked in the middle of a graveyard. He had two hours of memories to his name. If Wesley was in fact his name; Giles had told him it was, but how did he know he could trust Giles? Before him his legs hung over the side of the tub. His feet tingled from the way it cut into his ankles. Wesley knew this: he was a man with long legs.

Despite being half-submerged under water, his ears detected Giles puttering in the kitchenette, making tea. The sounds comforted him. He watched the darkness through the curtains. It sent a shiver down his spine. It was not a childish fear that gurgled up in him. It was one borne of knowledge he could not remember. These were facts and reactions and he had no way of tracing them to their origin.

The smell of the soap that had made bubbles in the water was familiar. Distantly, as though from a dream. It brought to mind linen pillow cases. Laid out on a bed tucked into the corner of a dimly lit room. For a moment they were so vivid Wesley could feel the scrape of the pillow case against his nose. His eyes snapped open. The bubbles had thinned out. The ceiling was reflected in the water. He felt strangely alone; he had expected the presence of someone, although he did not know who. The background sounds had gone, replaced by hushed conversation.

Shaking the dream away, Wesley stood up. As he climbed from the bath, he turned to put his foot on the mat. At this angle he could see himself in the water. A man in his thirties, with hair past his chin. It was a face that meant nothing to him. He couldn't have picked it out of a line up. He reached out a hand, intent on upsetting the water. It paused over the image. He turned away, reaching instead for a towel.

He went into the hall, wrapped tightly in the towel. He felt almost more naked that he had been a few hours ago, padding down the hall of a stranger's house in nothing but a a bit of terry cloth.

"Giles," he called out, "do you perhaps have some clothing items I might be able to borrow -"

He stopped dead at the end of the little hall. Giles was sitting on the couch sharing tea with a young blonde woman. Shadow images sprang up in his mind's eye, flickering against the brightness of his spotlessly empty mind.

Blonde hair was spread around her like a halo. It was stained strawberry with blood. Darkness, at every turn. A scream. Running. A man was - there was a knife in his hand, and beneath it an arm. Little cuts, make it last long, make a mark, make a statement, make a difference. Things, bones, bowing and breaking, twisting and shattering. New and clean and starting over, breaking the line -

Wesley thought these images should have conjured a scream from him, some visible indicator of his distress. It didn't, he merely stared at her. When the length of time spent searching her face for some flicker of solid recognition dragged too long, became too obvious, he pretended to nearly drop his towel. He clutched at it, till his knuckles went white. He stared at her, and she stared back, her eyes wide.

"Giles, you wanna introduce me to your nude friend?"

"Buffy," he said scoldingly. "This is Wesley. He is - an old acquaintance of sorts. He is having a bit of a memory issue at the moment."

She eyed him speculatively. If he had felt naked a moment before, it was nothing compared to the probing effect of her gaze. But he rode it out, let himself be made bare before her. He knew nothing, possessed nothing for which he should be ashamed. Let her find him; he could not do it himself.

"A-about those clothes," Wesley tried again, making sure his voice trembled appropriately in embarrassment.

"Oh yes, of course. Come upstairs with me, and we'll get you sorted out." Giles rose, and together they climbed the stairs up to the loft. Wesley could feel Buffy's eyes on him, cutting through the defenses he had raised with little trouble or thought.

Outfitted in a jumper and pants, Wesley felt much more honestly at ease. But he quickly discovered he did not have many setting past "on edge". Sitting in an arm chair by Giles' fire place he felt rather out of place. The girl, Buffy, was a subdued one, refusing to say much in his presence. She merely looked at him, and away when she was caught. It took a while for it to occur to Wesley that a young woman such as Buffy being in an older gentleman's house at this early hour should be scandalous. He watched them carefully, with some alarm, and relaxed only when he saw Giles look disapprovingly at the time, admonish Buffy about school being but a few hours away, to which she pouted, and indicated her school bag with a sound kick.

Wesley turned his mind from them; their relationship was not his business. His business was to discover why he had no memory, why Giles knew him and yet remained quiet as to the details, why Buffy seemed to have rung a bell - however faintly - in his memory. Rain began to fall, spattering the windows with sheets of water. It was grey and gloomy outside. Mist hung in the air. It felt ponderously familiar, as though it were a sight he looked upon every day.

"Are we, perhaps, in England?" he asked hesitantly, looking out in the garden. It was blurred, soft and indistinct through the curtain of water.

Two sets of eyes looked at him as though he had grown a second head. He felt surreptitiously around his neck to be sure he hadn't.

"This is Southern California," Buffy said tartly.

Wesley spent some moments looking, and feeling, like a fish with his mouth open. "Isn't Southern California meant to be sunny?"

"We have been having some strange weather lately," Giles said simply, shifting uncomfortably.

"It snowed a few weeks ago," Buffy added, with the oddest voice. Pride and apprehension somehow made themselves one in her tone.

Wesley kept quiet after that, giving the impression he had folded up along oft-used lines. He observed the two of them, and after a while, they seemed to forget him. Giles went to make some breakfast around six, and Buffy turned on an ancient TV, bringing the morning news up. At this point it became clear that whatever town he was in, it was not a normal one. The first thing reported on was the previous years' mortality rate, followed by some obituaries from the last few weeks. As they went to commercial, Buffy caught his eye. She looked responsible, upset, guilty almost. He swallowed, and was drawn toward her. He could understand those emotions, could find them in himself. Perhaps she would be able to find the other things he could not.

He sat down beside her.

4  
_Steal my heart and hold my tongue.  
I feel my time, my time has come.  
Let me in, unlock the door.  
I've never felt this way before._  
Buffy meets him in a flurry of trying to get somewhere else. She doesn't really notice him at the time; he isn't really the sort of person you notice. He seems capable of making himself transparent, of stepping so far back to observe that he literally removes himself from his surroundings.

After the crisis is passed, the police are dealt with and Joyce is safe at home with some strong tea, Buffy lets herself think about it, how bizarre the entire thing was. There Giles was, in the Library researching as always, and there was some other guy, wearing Giles' clothes no less, hovering around, not helping, not involved, just there.

They hadn't spoken, Buffy had walked right past him. He might have tried to introduce himself in a flutter of hands that weren't quite sure what to do with themselves. Buffy might not even have registered it at the time. Might not have had any thoughts to spare, not when her mother has shaking outside in the car, and the police were writing a report about broken windows and stolen art. Giles might have looked at him as they left, might have said something, might have kept Buffy from returning to her mother within two minutes. She isn't sure.

It's half a week before she remembers him again. She walks in on Giles having the sort of heated fight that made her red in the face, the sort that seems so unpleasant and loud you can't make out any words the first few seconds after you first catch the sounds of it. Buffy pauses by the counter, embarrassed, almost sickened, fighting the urge to back slowly away and wash her ears out with something like acid.

Then he walks out of the office, ill but not obviously the target of Giles' yelling, since it continues on without the man's notice. When he sees her, her brain grinds to a halt, and what may be several important organs fall into her feet. He smiles apologetically, and mimes slapping someone. He isn't sure she understands exactly what's going on here, but the word "bitch-slapped" comes to mind.

He comes toward her, collecting himself. The moment the effects of Giles' yelling begins rolling off him is evident. He's within three feet of her, and suddenly all sound seems to drop away. A little sphere around them both, and she's pulling him closer. He's muttering something she can't quite make out, his eyes out of focus. They're nearly kissing when the spell breaks, spilling sound and harsh breath.

A nervous energy comes off him; every muscle and nerve is telling him to step back, out of her personal space. She can feel it. He doesn't move away, but closer, until his fingers are trailing over her cheek, ghosting along her jaw line. Her eyes slide shut, and she blinks drowsily at him. His fingers find there way to her neck, running along the collar of her shirt. She gasps, and steps sharply back, looking into his face.

They see each other for a moment, as though they had not before. Buffy's breath is short in coming and a great deal of heat seems to exit the room very quickly. The sound of Giles' speaking changes; he is no longer yelling, but speaking in the clipped tones of someone who once raised a demon for little more than a laugh.

The man swallows; Buffy likes the way his throat moves.

"Right yes, well, I'm Wesley. At least I think I am. And I think you are Buffy."

"Yes, yes I am."

"Did the room feel very strange to you, just a moment ago?"

"Uh-huh," Buffy says, and then gives herself something that is a cross between a mental slap and a mental cold shower. "When Giles is done decapitating someone via the phone we should mention that something weird happened."

She trails off, and Wesley is flustered. Buffy needs to be elsewhere, like, five minutes ago. But she stands still, observing him. He thinks she can't see him watching her from beneath his lashes. He thinks he's the only one utterly embarrassed.

In the other room, Giles hangs up, and pokes his head out the office door.

"Right, we may have to stop calling you Wesley, and oh, by the way Buffy, it's entirely possible the Council just sacked us both."

"What?" they ask in tandem, and Buffy can feel him move toward Giles at the same moment, like they were riding bikes together.

When Giles finishes ten minutes later Buffy is more exhausted, frightened and lost than the night she was Called. Wes isn't much better. But he doesn't have a Chem test to study for.

It is a strange thing, the sense of being lost on an island in the middle of the Pacific and trapped in a crowd in a low-ceilinged room at the same time. Her stomach churns, her body feels like a wrong-sized dress, she takes a breath -

\- and it all stops. Everything lays itself out before her. Giles will fix this, whatever lunacy the Council has apparently been affected by. Coups of power are weird, and for her to understand she would actually have to pay attention in class, but basic facts are basic facts. They need her and Faith, or at least one of them, and she really doubts Faith is pro-establishment enough to ask how high when they say jump without aid of a BuffyFilter.

"Wesley - or whatever it is we might have to call you - would you like to get some coffee?" she finds herself saying, as the wheels in her mind work it all out to its inevitable, inevitably wrong, conclusion.

"Buffy," Giles says, all sharp consonants and brittle vowels.

"Of course, only if it's okay."

They leave Giles behind, because he's in no real position to say no to such a simple request. Buffy doesn't think about it; her muscles burn, and her left hand tingles. Most of this probably still won't make sense after a good night's sleep, but she doesn't care very much at all.

At the Espresso Pump the sphere of white noise is closing in on them again. It isn't like the tug when she's near Angel; it isn't Epic or Tragic, or even particularly Romantic, but she wants very much to climb onto his lap and do things to him in the middle of the crowded coffee shop she isn't ever likely to be able to do with Angel.

"This is all very odd for me. I feel so - I don't even know where to begin. It's like if your life was a photo album, and instead of pages just being empty of everything of actual significant meaning, beyond facts and knowledge and things that aren't really tangible memories, the pages have been ripped out. I can't even guess how much is missing."

"So you have no idea, at all, who you are? What you like? What you're like?" He looked at her hard, sharply almost. She paused, and continued. "How could they prove anything if they found you, you don't even have ID?"

"Giles knew things, basic run-of-the-mill stuff. Name, birthdate et cetera. But no, I personally know very little. I would suppose they wouldn't care if they could prove it or not. It all seems very dangerous, like a movie. I'm not sure if I believe it all yet."

"Suspension of disbelief problems?"

"Oh yes, tremendous ones." He smiled at her, and she found herself smiling back.

They crash into each other the moment they reach Buffy's door. It seems surreal, that she can do this; never in her whole dating life has she been in this position. She was always with Angel, and he tugs insistently at the back of her mind as she unlocks the front door, and they spill into the foyer with a gust of winter air.

In her bedroom she is older and new and changed against her beige bedspread and the foil butterflies on the walls. He lays her down in a field of plush toys, and they fall in a rain to the floor and she is on top. His hands are soft, but she can feel on his middle finger where he must have spent most of his life holding a pen. Her room feels small and childish as she moves, as she unlocks new doors and ill-used rooms inside herself.

It's thrilling, that he seems hesitant, that he wants her to guide him, as though unsure. It's so unlike her first time, and the fear abates as he moans and arches and strains to be closer. She did this, she is doing this. Her twisting hips, unguided by her partner's hands, are evoking sounds that make her toes curl and her belly tighten. She screams his name when she comes the third time, and wonders if it means enough to him to matter. He says her name like an anchor, like a landmark.

They lie together afterwards, and he is soft, wrapping himself around her. She feels full, satisfied, and the white noise is gone. The rumble of cars in the street, the hum of street lamps, the buzz of the world outside, and the blow of his breath against her neck lull her to sleep.

Her mother has gone from Sylvie's straight to work, and Buffy knows this before the terror has a chance to ruin her afterglow. Wesley's hands are low on her stomach, knotted in her hair. It's comfortable, intimate. She leans back against his warm chest, listens to the beating of his heart. He wakes, his face in her hair. It smells like shampoo and perfume. It smells like winter and nail polish.

It's joyful, it's beyond orgasmic, these tiny fact he knows, he can hold in his hands, he can plot on a map. His fingers tighten, twitch. She giggles, and he presses his face into his shoulder. The heaviness, the glow, shatters as her alarm clock goes off, and she sits up abruptly. She doesn't reach for it immediately, she lets it sober her, lets it waken her fully. Her fingers reach for it, but Wesley's are there already, turning it off.

And then she realizes something awful. Something so much bigger than demons and apocalypses and boyfriends who go evil.

"How am I going to deal with this?" He is trying to be comforting, but no man can feel the early fear of a pregnancy scare. The sinking, choking panic. Buffy's is a million times worse than any other woman's; no one else is a Slayer, would have to risk her child's life every night to simply do her job. "Giles is going to kill me," she says blankly.

"I rather expect he'll be a bit busy taking me apart with a spoon."

Buffy laughs through her tears, and the long familiar urge to go to Angel, who can fix anything and everything and nothing could stop him, comes. But how can she go to him? How would that be fair? How would that be wise, or mature and not silly and fearful and disrespectful and so many things that are filling her up until her bones are corroded away. She covers it with clothes, with perfume, with make up, with anything normal, anything solid she can get her hands around.

Wesley takes her to school, delivers her to Giles, whose eyes Buffy cannot meet, and disappears into Giles' office. Giles leaves Buffy with a "did you sleep all right, you look tired?" and joins Wesley in the office. It is nothing like the previous day, there is no vacuum of sound, no intolerable yelling, just the quiet crinkle of Wesley taking a sheet of paper from Giles and leaving. Giles putters about with the previous night's returns, and Buffy feels so transparent, but he does not look and so does not see what is clearly showing through the armor of pleated pink and folded mauve.

Willow comes in before Homeroom. She belongs to a different world, and Buffy is looking at her through colored water. Willow comes to her side without words, takes her in her arms, and Buffy doesn't cry. She's with Willow; something like this couldn't be true, not if Willow is hugging her.

Angel finds an intruder on his property twenty minutes after Buffy's mind stops its sailing trip in Egypt and she begins crying on Willow's shoulder. A tweed-clad Councilman, who was too stupid to bring any weapon other than the white daylight of early February.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Angel hovers on the threshold of his home, watching the sun and not the man.

"Angelus - " but the man's words break off. He drops to his knees and behind him another man is holding a tranquilizer gun.

"Hello. Sorry about all this, but these lot are being a bit of a problem. Forget about all this, very, uh ... " the man's words run out when he notices that Angel's hand has begun to smoke in the sunlight seeping into the front hall. "Are you a vampire?" he asks, and Angel would say he sounded enraptured. Angel breathes deep, and the smell coming off this human confirms it.

"Yes."

"T-that's terribly interesting. You wouldn't happen to be the one with a soul, or know where I could find him would you?"

"That depends."

"I-I could pay you for directions, I'm sure there's a reimbursement program for this sort of thing. Of course Giles might not be privy to that any longer. I really don't understand any of this."

Angel steps back and Wesley has the sensation of falling down the rabbit hole as he follows Angel into the old mansion. Angel skirts sunlight on the tiles, made into mesmerizing patterns by the ivy that hangs over the windows. They sit and speak over a coffee table. Wesley tries to sit as far away as possible, but it's only a matter of seconds before Angel smells Buffy on him.

Tension hangs around Angel, as though every muscles and nerve is telling him to rush Wesley and rip his throat out after many hours of torture. He remains still, and a horrible look crosses his face. Dead and cold and shuttered, like the corpse he really is. Wesley shudders, but then the light hits Angel's face and the look is not that at all. It's a gutted one, one belonging to someone who has been devastated. Who has done the math, put two and two together and gotten an equation of which he is not a part, when he had been so sure he would be, when he had put it together with anticipation, anticipation that has now curdled like milk in summer.

"She, she sent you?" The words are twisted, broken under suppressed rage and hopelessness, confusion tinged with blood lust.

"Not exactly. Things are complicated, the Council, from what Giles has gathered, are causing problems, one of which is my inability to remember anything," Wesley says, and finds he has come very close to Angel as he's been speaking, "anything about myself." He is alluring, he looks royal, and he is devastating in his soft black sweater and the muzzled, sleepy look he still wears.

Angel looks closely at him, calculating, no longer crushed. Wesley is warmed to know he did that, and growing warmer with the second. "Why are you here?" Angel breathes against his mouth. Wesley does not hear it, he feels it, brushing against his cheeks, hanging between them.

Angel's eyes close as their lips meet, and he can taste Buffy on them. He kisses hard and furious until he has taken the taste, and can taste this man beneath it. Wesley doesn't clutch at his shoulders, and Angel almost expects him too. So long since it was anyone but a girl, since it was anyone but Buffy. He changes the angle, and he can smell her all down his throat. The longer they kiss, the longer Wesley's fingers tremble and fiddle themselves beneath his sweater, the more obvious the truth becomes.

Angel pauses, parting his lips, frozen between deepening the kiss and pulling back. His hand at Wesley's shoulder, almost where it meets his neck, tightens and reels Wesley in. "Did you sleep with her?" Their second kiss answers it, and Angel is falling forward, into Wesley, trying to prise pieces of her from him.

They fuck on the couch, Angel moving slowly. The fire lights Wesley with a glow, and they move together. Angel's eyes are closed, but he knows they are a tableaux, bright and harsh against the sofa. It is this scene, this moment as Angel leans down and almost loses control, almost reaches the point where he feels her, that haunts Wesley when he leaves. A face in its vampire mask pressed into his shoulder, what might have been tears but might have been sweat soaking into his skin.

Wesley does not smell at all like himself when he returns, dragging the unconscious body of the Councilman. He hugs Buffy surreptitiously, when Giles is interrogating the Councilman, just to smell himself, just to remember who he is. She curls into him, holds him up, provides him pieces of himself. It's just a moment, it's just two people bent together in a wood-paneled library under the hazy winter light, and then it is two people standing apart, and three standing over a fourth who is tied to a chair.

Buffy leaves before they get anywhere worth going. She goes home, to her mother who is cooking lunch while looking around with paranoia every other moment. The second Buffy steps on the gravel path outside, Joyce can feel her anxiety ease. They eat together in the kitchen, and Joyce is so proud, and so scared and so comforted. She holds her most precious treasure close, breathes in her hair, and is too relieved to notice anything amiss. Buffy clutches back, and is warm and loved in a way that no one but Mother can do, in a way that is being draped in fresh blankets and falling asleep in the sun and unfreezing from the inside as you drink hot cocoa.

She does not go to any of her classes that day. Willow meets her by the drugstore, and Buffy wants to cry again. She wants Willow to hold her up, in an inexplicably awful way. All the times she has not fallen apart, all the time she has had to be there for others before she was there for herself well up, as though the time in which she could be paid back for them is disappearing with alarming speed. Buffy clutches at Willow, and together they go to Willow's with the pregnancy test inside multiple bags, futile attempts to hide it from everyone, and most especially from herself.

Angel is at the library before the sun has finished sinking. Frost has begun to make itself from the dew and Angel feels sick, unable to process things as he usually would. Blood is so strong when he steps into the school that his mind reels, and he knows something is wrong. It just isn't anything at all like he is expecting.

Giles is crouched before the Councilman, speaking in a low voice. His shirtsleeves are rolled up, and crimson with blood. The floor of the library is inky wet with it. Everything goes to slow motion for Angel as he steps over it, because he can see unnatural weather in the sky above reflected in it, weather that is not there when he looks up. He looks everywhere but at Giles, at the horrible deja vu this is.

"Giles." He has to say it three times, his voice has gone dry as bone and his knees feel wrong. The Watcher turns, and there is blood down his front.

"Hello Angel." His curtness snaps Angel out of it, into the moment, the moment that for some reason has required Giles to bloody his hands. "We're having some trouble with the council, and this one doesn't seem to find me very scary. Would you like a go?"

Wesley does not know why he picked up the phone, even as he stands outside Willow's house, but he is glad he did. He wishes the walk had been shorter, because he is aching, and he guesses bitterly he knows what sort of exerciser he was. Buffy is in the living room, and he does not rush to her, because he feels silly and juvenile and so frightened for a moment he wonders if Willow would mind terribly much if he was sick all over the hall rug.

She turns at his choking noise, and her smile is odd. She has lost something she did not have, did not want and somehow that is worse than having and wanting, because it is indistinct, it is limitless in the imagination it invokes. But her fear is gone, and when he presses his nose to her throat for the second time that day, he is steadied by the smell he breathes in, one he labels Wesley, me. One that is slowly getting tangled in her smell, in the shampoo that he doesn't know the name of. And on his skin, her scent is interweaving with the cold and dry and desperate smell that was Angel, bent over him trying to get to the one place he could not, cannot, go.

The Councilman goes out in the trash, in pieces even a forensic would not recognize. Angel leaves before Buffy returns, and washes himself so hard he pulls a layer of skin off. The smell is under his nails, and when he lies still upon the bedspread he can smell Buffy and Wesley under it. Fear spirals up, and swallows him whole as he drifts into sleep, into nightmare scapes where Buffy lies broken on crisp snow, where blood is spread like rubies and she is but a porcelain doll.

Buffy and Wesley and Willow sit at the long table, and the day that stretches away behind is like the shadows they cast, attached to their feet, and faint in the dim light, but a foreboding presence none of them speak of for fear of seeming childish. Willow is sorting through cleaning products, Giles is again crouched on the ground, but now scrubbing it. Wesley has a book open, and Buffy is itching for a fight.

"Is it safe to go out and patrol?" she asks suddenly, breaking the silence.

"I think the Council would have to be much more foolhardy than they have so far shown themselves to be to do something to keep you from your duty."

"But it's possible?" Willow asks. Her alarm is somehow bolstering. Buffy will go off and kill monsters, and Willow will stay here finding out whether or not it's possible. As she rises from the table, Wesley catches her hand, and the deafening silence threatens to pull her in. She smiles, and leaves and pulls out a stake.

Xander joins them, and together he and Willow scrub and Giles dries out his contacts &amp; resources and in the din of it all Wesley is forgotten, someone with only another person's word to go on as to who he is, someone who is to a wallflower what a ghost is to a zombie. He feels invisible and immobile and they move around him, as though blood and cleanup and fear and vampires were so normal, were so mundane and everyday as cooking dinner and doing the washing up. Willow quizzes Xander on chemistry and Giles calls out suggestions and ideas from what was gleaned from the Councilman, and somehow together it does seem quite normal, quite enclosed, controlled, without need of him.

Wesley sneaks out, and Buffy is waiting at the edge of the campus, a stark shadow. The night seems white and bright and Wesley is homesick for an England he can't even picture, for a home he knows nothing of, for things he can name and not know. He takes her hand, takes a stake and takes a bit of himself, enough so that he can pin himself down in relation to everything, especially to her, especially to the feeling that makes the oddly heavy moon romantic and not frightening.

At a graveyard that is strangely cinematic, full of old brown leaves that kick up beneath their feet and trees that make the breeze howl, Wesley sees a vampire. Angel is hovering in the shadows, slinking in their direction. He is north on their compasses and they both turn to him, in tandem, in the unity of some unspoken bond that ties her to him and him to her and him to him. It hangs like a thread, like a way back from the end, a path to the start. Wesley grabs ahold, and plunges in, toward new memories and life and home and everything ever, that is contained between them.

_In your tears and in your blood,  
In your fire and in your flood,  
I hear you laugh, I heard you say,  
"I wouldn't change a single thing."_   



End file.
